Prompt Security's Itamar Golan on Why Generative AI Security Requires Building a Category, Not a Feature

Why It Matters

GenAI expands the attack surface to non‑technical users, making enterprise AI adoption a security priority. Prompt Security’s category approach gives CISOs a scalable, governance‑ready solution that protects data and IP across all AI touchpoints.

Key Takeaways

• Shadow AI costs enterprises $4.63 M per breach
• 97% of breached firms lack basic AI access controls
• Prompt Security raised $23 M, exited under two years
• Category‑first strategy secured CISO‑level budget and trust
• Real‑time sanitization enables safe AI use without productivity loss

Pulse Analysis

The rise of shadow AI has turned everyday productivity tools into hidden risk vectors. Enterprises now juggle dozens of unmanaged LLM‑powered applications, creating blind spots that traditional security stacks cannot see. By cataloguing over 12,000 AI tools and exposing a $4.63 million per‑breach cost, Prompt Security highlighted the economic imperative for visibility and control. This context explains why investors are pouring capital into AI‑specific security firms and why large platform players are eager to integrate such capabilities.\n\nPrompt Security’s differentiation lay in treating AI protection as an enterprise control layer rather than a single feature. Early decisions to support hybrid deployments, embed runtime safeguards, and offer model‑agnostic policies positioned the company at the CISO table, allowing it to command budget and influence governance frameworks. Depth‑over‑logo tactics produced strong reference customers, turning product feedback into a defensible moat that competitors struggled to replicate. These strategic moves accelerated growth and made the company an attractive acquisition target for SentinelOne.\n\nPost‑acquisition, the integration of Prompt Security’s runtime GenAI controls into SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform expands protection across endpoints, identities, and cloud workloads. The combined offering can monitor AI interactions in real time, automatically strip sensitive data from prompts, and enforce policy across major LLM providers and self‑hosted models. As AI adoption continues its 61‑fold surge, such unified defenses will become essential for enterprises seeking to harness generative capabilities without exposing intellectual property or regulatory compliance risks.